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Another bird-of-prey dream. Rumbling along on a train, I noticed something huge and red-brown in a tree. It was enormous – bigger surely than any English bird of prey, and more vibrantly coloured. As my angle of looking at it changed, one creature separated into two – a mother and chick, perhaps, but getting a last look at their furry, orange backs, I wasn’t at all sure that they were birds and not orangutans.

(When I told them this dream, one of my housemates helpfully played a bit of Jim Morrison’s Bird of Prey on his phone, so I’ve intermittently had that stuck in my head for the rest of the day.)

And, a hypothetical lover (no-one I actually know) asking me whether, aside from the annoyance of folks frequently patronising me, there were also some advantages for me in people thinking I’m much younger than I am. I shall mull that over.

1. I had a little kitten, mostly black with some white. It was playing in the garden when I noticed there was a huge, fierce-faced buzzard perching just feet away. * “Shit,” I thought, “do buzzards eat cats? Or is it cats that eat buzzards?” I brought the kitten in, just to be safe.

* I did see some buzzards the other day, whilst driving (or being driven, rather) down a country road. They were perching in low trees, close enough that I could see their faces and know they meant business. Come to think of it, K and I were talking about dreams at the time, and I interjected to say that buzzards in the trees represented not giving a fuck.

There was also a tiny muntjac deer, grazing by the side of the road. When I told one of my housemates, she claimed sincerely that she’d dreamt of a muntjac deer the night before!

2. My therapist was seriously – maybe terminally – ill, and I was looking after his cat.

Running a bath, but first I had to encourage the snakes to go down the plug hole. There were around four to six of them, all orange or red and a little narrower than my thumb. After my bath, I gave my hair an extra rinse in the sink, and noticed the water running a mossy brown colour. While I was rinsing, the doorbell rang and I felt mildly guilty for letting my housemates get it, when I knew it was likely to be a delivery for me.

Then, realising that I was up, bathed and dressed all ready for work at such an early hour, I felt pretty damn impressed at myself. Unfortunately, this is a ruse my subconscious often plays, to horrify me all the more when I wake up and find I’m still in bed.

Later, I was going through a large book that Sibling had had since childhood, to try and identify the snakes. We also looked at illustrations of birds; he asked me to estimate, from the drawings, whether the wing span of one was bigger than my hand and I said no without really looking, then regretted my answer. Sibling turned his attention to his favourite section of the book, on vampires, and asked, “what did you say the vampire you dreamt about was called?”

“Damn, I can’t remember,” I said, “I’ll have to look back through my blog,” but although I could remember the vampire dream, there was no record, on the blog or any of the bits of paper I have lying around, of his name. *